Morrison Electricar

Well, in these worrying times, with some of my readers likely to be stuck indoors for up to four months, I would like to try and keep you occupied by blogging about Loughborough's interesting past. And it is likely I will be writing about the past too, as if large gatherings are going to be banned, then I probably won't be getting out and about much.

Before the possibility of staying indoors arose, many people were worrying about the environment, and how they could be more environmentally friendly, and help preserve the beautiful planet we've been looking after. Things like going vegan have become popular, and there's lots of research going on into sustainability etc.. The other thing that's gradually getting more and more popular is electric cars and reducing plastic use. Hmmm, these two things might go together quite well.




So where am I going with this? Maybe back to the past and the days of glass milk bottles, and electric delivery vehicles. Now, I don't know if you've heard of the Morrison Electricar but there are lots of connections with Loughborough.






The company making these vehicles began as an engineering works in Leicester, started by Alfred Ernest Morrison in the 1890s, initially making pedal bikes and motorcycles and sidecars. Gas powered stationary engines used to power generators came next and during the first world war the company repaired agricultural machinery. Then came radio battery rechargers, and automotive batteries, and in around 1927 the manufacture of cinema equipment.

When Alfred Ernest's son, Alfred Charles, joined the company, and experimented with producing an electric vehicle that could deliver provisions more quickly and economically than a horse-drawn drey. The prototype worked well, and with a number of modifications and plenty of orders, the vehicle went into full production, and very quickly started to respond to overseas demand. In the early days of production, the company produced lots of the parts needed, like, chassis, motors and controllers, but things like the braking system and the axles were made at the Brush.

Each time the company expanded, they moved premises, and this time they moved to Irlam Street, South Wigston, and company went from strength to strength. In about 1940 Morrison designed a small battery electric motor unit for the Brush, which Brush then manufactured. Eventually, Brush became a competitor of Morrisons, and in the late 1960s, after a number of name changes, the company was owned by Hawker Siddelely, who also owned other companies who produced electric vehicles. The company continued to be successful well into the 1970s, but produced their last designed vehicle, a white van, in around 1982.

In this short blog post I cannot go into great detail about the history of the company, nor the technical design of their products, but there is a lot of information out there on the internet - see the links below.

The other connection to Loughborough is that the grandson of the original founder of Morrisons lives in Loughborough, and has done for nearly all of his life!           

If you're looking to read up a bit more about this topic, you could do worse than look at these links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrison-Electricar 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brush_Traction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brush_Electrical_Machines

https://edisontechcenter.org/ElectricCars.html

http://archive.commercialmotor.com/article/24th-october-1958/60/battery-electrics-unchallenged

https://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C1074191

http://southwigstonshopping.com/history/

https://www.kirbyandwest.co.uk/history/

https://www.ltht.org.uk/2015/11/18/kirby-west-milk-float-donated-to-trust/

https://www.ltht.org.uk/wry-342/ 

You are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follow:

Dyer, Lynne (2020). Morrison Electricar. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2020/03/morrison-electricar.html [Accessed 15 March 2020]

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Thank you for reading this blog. 

Lynne